Learning Center

Options Trading

Are you a visual learner? Skip the reading and check out TradeKing's video library. Educational topics range from stock and options trading to different kinds of analysis and everything in between.

Videos are separated by main category (Stocks, Options, Bonds, ETFs, Tools) and skill level (Rookies, Veterans, Seasoned Veterans), so you'll be sure to find what suits you. Just click on the video title and a video player will open as a pop up window.

Assignment and Exercise

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Join Brian as he explains what happens when options get exercised and the resulting assignment that occurs.

Beginning: Options Trading

Part 1 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Learn important vocabulary and discover how the options marketplace evolved.

Butterfly Spreads (Long)

Part 14 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Seasoned Veterans

Learn the set-up of the basic butterfly and how its price changes as expiration approaches. This is the first of several sessions on the many different types and uses of butterfly trades.

Butterfly Spreads: Combining Plays

Part 16 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Seasoned Veterans

All of your butterfly trading techniques come together in this session. Join Brian as he combines different trades to produce unique risk-reward scenarios. Please be sure to review Parts 14 and 15 beforehand.

Butterfly Spreads: Exotic Plays (Long)

Part 15 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Seasoned Veterans

Ramp up your butterfly trading by learning some creative variations. Join Brian as he covers modified, skip-strike, and Christmas tree butterflies and more. A comparison of the different varieties follows.

Buying Options: The Basics

Part 2 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Join Brian as he covers this popular subject. Topics include the differences between buying options for investing as opposed to pure speculation.

Buying Options: Which Option Should I Buy?

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

When is the best time to buy an option? Should it be in-the-money or out-of-the-money? What strategy would you recommend? Join Brian as he discusses some key topics for beginning option traders.

Calendar Spreads (Long)

Part 12 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Seasoned Veterans

Join Brian as he introduces long calendar spreads. Areas of interest encompass the intricacies of setting up the trade, choosing an underlying, the Greeks, and how to roll the position.

Calendar Spread Trading in a High Volatility Environment

Hosted by Dan Sheridan, for Seasoned Veterans

There are many varieties of long calendar spreads, but the most common structure is buying a longer-term call or put and selling a shorter-term call or put at the same time. Join Dan as he explains how to pick candidates in a high volatility environment. He also discusses adjusting positions when they go against you.

Choose Your Option Strategy Part 1: How to Determine Your Outlook

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Rookies and Veterans

Join Nicole as she explains the three most important words in trading: Outlook, Outlook, and Outlook. Topics include developing ideas on volatility, the direction of the underlying, and the overall market. In addition, Nicole highlights the many news items that can derail any well planned stock or option trade.

Choose Your Option Strategy Part 2: Implied Volatility and Greeks

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Veterans

Join Nicole as she expands on How to Determine Your Outlook. Take the guessing game out of trading and learn how to use implied volatility (IV) and the Greeks to whittle 30+ option strategies down to a select few. Download Nicole's slides.

Choose Your Option Strategy Part 3: Bringing it All Together

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Veterans

Part 1 covered analyzing implied volatility. Part 2 discussed how the Greeks can be used in strategy selection. Bring it all together to create guidelines for choosing your optimal trading strategy for your market outlook. Nicole walks you through some time-saving tricks when doing your research on potential trades. Download Nicole's slides.

Collars

Part 6 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

The collar strategy is when you sell a call and buy a put on a security you own. This strategy limits the downside risk in exchange for capping the upside potential on the stock for little to no cost.

Covered Call Writing

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Brian starts this session with option basics: calls, puts, time value, intrinsic value, and exercise. He continues with a related strategy, Buy-Writes, finding promising trades, trade analysis and order entry and wraps up with a list of items to keep in mind with covered calls. Download Brian's slides.

Covered Calls and Rolling

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Brian discusses alternatives for managing your covered call when the trade goes in-the-money. This includes rolling the strike, rolling the month, or a combination of both. Download Brian's slides.

Covered Call Writing Only

Part 4 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Covered call writing is a great way to start trading options. Brian walks through the strategy step-by-step.

Diagonal Spreads

Part 13 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Seasoned Veterans

Become knowledgeable of two different ways to use diagonal spreads after watching this video. Topics include directional trades, time decay strategies, rolling and more. Brian brings everything together with a comparison to calendar and vertical spreads.

Exercise and Assignment: The Ins and Outs

Part 3 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Brian explains the different exercise styles for American and European options. He also discusses what happens when options get exercised and the resulting assignment that occurs.

Finding Big Trends in Trading Stocks and Options

Hosted by Price Headley, for Veterans

Price discusses several key technical indicators he uses to define trends. These include CBOE Equity Put/Call Ratio, CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), Acceleration Bands, and Williams %R. He also covers ideas on how to use the closing stop, options as a stock-substitute, and staying with your winning trades longer.

The Greeks!

Part 8 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Veterans

Understand the Greeks before implementing your option strategy. Brian not only defines them in layman's terms, but he shows which Greek is the driving factor for many different options strategies. This presentation is a must-see before proceeding to advanced option strategies.

Greeks and More

Hosted by Peter Lusk, for Veterans

Have you made or lost money with options, but not understood the reasons why? Knowing how the Greeks impact your trade is a great way to get a better handle on the factors that influence an option's price - and therefore your bottom line. Sit with Peter for an eye-opening session. Topics include delta, gamma, theta, vega, and rho.

Index and ETF Options

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Rookies and Veterans

Index and ETF options have unique terms and characteristics. Trading them without full awareness of their significant differences from equity options can be detrimental to your bottom line. Topics include: AM/PM settlement, last trading day, opening rotation, and much more. Download Nicole's slides. Visit the Index forum discussion.

Index Options and More

Hosted by Marty Kearney, for Veterans

This session is designed for experienced investors and traders who want to improve their ability in selecting option strategies. Join Marty as he discusses planning option trades, trading volatility and several intermediate to advanced strategies for high volatility market environments.

One Cancels Other Orders

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Rookies

Do you find yourself watching every tick of the market in order to jump on a possibly short-lived opportunity? Join Nicole as she explains OCO orders. Topics include stock & option trades, profits, losses, and the pros/cons. Viewing Types of Orders is recommended. Download Nicole's slides. Visit the OCO forum discussion.

Options Calculator

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Learn how to conduct what-if analyses on a single option position with this calculator. Adjustable variables include date, stock price, implied volatility and more. This tool is best for traders that prefer to work with numbers instead of graphs.

Options Chains

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Start maximizing your option trade research by learning how to use TradeKing's 19 different option chains. Brian walks you through the key features of this extensive and valuable tool.

Options Chains and More

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Rookies

Nicole tackles your questions on how to read an option chain including the Change and Last columns. Other topics include the relationship between options volume and an option's price, how an option's price changes, beginning option strategies, contrasting long and short term options and more.

Options Lingo

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Rookies

Nicole breaks down complicated options terms into easy-to-understand language. Buzzwords include call option, put option, underlying, strike, premium, expiration, assignment, exercise, long, short, open and close. Download Nicole's slides.

Options Scanner

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies and Veterans

Discover how to search for a single option trade with this tool. Basic criteria include expiration, liquidity, risk and more. Advanced criteria consist of open interest, volatility, volume and many others. Please review the Option Strategy Scanner for multi-leg trades.

Options Trading Plan

Hosted by Dan Sheridan, for Veterans

Organizing your plan when trading options can be overwhelming. Join Dan as he covers important areas such as creating a portfolio plan, diversification, monthly allocation, scaling up to larger trades, the 2% guideline, and much more.

Probability Calculator

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies and Veterans

Become skilled at how to determine the probability of an asset having a certain price at a date in the future. Covered call and credit spread traders may find this tool particularly insightful. Calculations for standard deviation are also provided.

Profit & Loss Calculator

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies and Veterans

Learn how to perform what-if analyses on a single or multi-leg option position. Adjustable variables include stock price, implied volatility, post expiration analysis and more. This tool is best for traders that prefer to work with graphs rather than numbers. Extensive numerical information is also provided.

Profit + Loss Calculator and Option Trading

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies and Veterans

Join Brian as he explains in detail how to use TradeKing's Profit and Loss Calculator. Learn how to perform what-if analyses on a single or multi-leg option position by adjusting variables like stock price, implied volatility, time to expiration and more. Download Brian's slides.

Put Options: Their Many Uses

Part 5 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Rookies

Brian discusses how to sell puts as a way to buy stocks you would like to own long-term. He also addresses how to lock in gains from a stock that you already own by buying protective puts.

Spreads: An Alternative to Covered Calls

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Veterans

Do you like the idea of selling covered calls, but want to use less capital? Brian explains how to use a long call bull spread as an alternative to the covered call play. Brian introduces long spreads and discusses in detail the important role time value plays in this strategy. Download Brian's slides.

Spreads: Long Call and Long Put Spreads

Part 9 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Veterans

Join Brian as he discusses how to enter a spread position as one trade for a net debit to your account. Many items to be covered including time premium and the trade-offs of spread trading versus the outright purchase of an option.

Spreads: Short Call Spreads

Part 10 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Seasoned Veterans

Learn the various ways to manage this strategy while the trade is in play. Additional topics include the differences between short and long spreads and variables that can affect spread pricing. Brian also discusses volatility skew and how it affects short call and short put spreads differently.

Straddles and Strangles (Long)

Part 11 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for Seasoned Veterans

Brian discusses the critical items of these similar strategies. Topics include when and when not to buy them, selecting the underlying to use, choosing the expiration month, the Greeks, and stop-loss points.

Straddle Trading and Gamma Scalping

Hosted by Dan Sheridan, for Seasoned Veterans

Gamma represents the amount a theoretical option's delta will change for a corresponding one-unit (point) change in the price of the underlying security. Join Dan as he explains how market makers use this powerful Greek when trading straddles.

Swing Trading: Options

Hosted by Doc Maher, for Rookies and Veterans

If you enjoy swing trading, step things up when bringing options into the mix. Doc covers topics such as understanding the trend and counter-trend, deciding when to enter and exit, and managing stop orders. If this is a new concept, please review Swing Trading with Stocks beforehand.

Synthetic Positions

Part 17 of The Options Playbook Series
Hosted by Brian Overby, for All-Stars

Join Brian as he demystifies this interesting strategy. A synthetic position is one that is created by combining different financial instruments to simulate another. Use puts and calls to create synthetic long stock, short stock and even T-bills. Watch to learn how!

Traders Lingo

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Rookies

This is a great first video to watch when getting started in the markets. Join Nicole as she covers terms like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange traded funds and more.

Trailing Stops

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Rookies

In this session, Nicole discusses how and when you can use trailing stop orders while trading. Topics include trigger, peg, increment, plus the pros and cons of this type of order, along with several trading examples. Viewing Types of Orders beforehand is recommended. Download Nicole's slides.

Types of Orders

Hosted by Nicole Wachs, for Rookies

In this session, Nicole explains the difference between Market, Limit, Stop and Stop Limit orders. She also covers how to read important market data such as the quote of a security, the bid, the ask, size, volume and more. Download Nicole's slides.

Vega Trap of Directional Options Trading

Hosted by Dan Passarelli, for Veterans

Have you learned about the Greeks and now want to apply this knowledge when trading? Be sure to join Dan for his session on Vega, the Greek which impacts an option's price with regard to changes in implied volatility. He covers how volatility can make or break your directional option trades. Visit the Vega forum discussion.

VIX Part 1

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Veterans and Seasoned Veterans

Before you decide to trade VIX options, be sure to join Brian for this eye-opening session on an often-confusing option product. You'll learn what a volatility index is, what the VIX represents, how the VIX is priced, and when it expires. Download Brian's slides.

VIX Part 2

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Veterans and Seasoned Veterans

Brian continues this exciting discussion on a perplexing option product. Topics covered in this session: the VIX as a market timing tool, the difference between the VIX index and VIX futures, behavior at expiration, and its correlation to the SPX. Please review VIX Part 1. Download Brian's slides.

Volatility and Butterfly Trading

Hosted by Brian Overby, for Seasoned Veterans

Join Brian as he covers butterfly spreads, how to use them as a volatility play, and how they are affected by volatility. Topics include how a decrease in implied volatility is often beneficial to long butterflies, and why traders use butterflies around important news events. Download Brian's slides. Visit the Butterfly forum discussion.

Volatility: Capitalize when Trading

Hosted by Doc Maher, for Seasoned Veterans

Doc explains how implied volatility typically behaves and some strategies to use to take advantage of its movement. This includes using straddles and strangles during earnings season, calendar spreads, and different hybrid combinations to use under various conditions. Visit the Capitalize forum discussion.